Hellmuth enters tournament, really late

Phil Hellmuth was one of the big names who registered really late for the World Poker Tour event at the Bellagio. Hellmuth registered two days late — the WPT lengthened late registration to accommodate the fact that the WSOP main event was still going on. Anyway, Phil still felt the need to make a big entrance, although not as elaborate as his ME entrance. Here it is:

Last woman standing

The last woman standing at the World Series of Poker main event has become quite the honor, even though we’re sure the women who end up in the running would rather win the whole thing. Since they don’t there’s this honor. This year’s winner was Breeze Zuckerman:

We want to do interviews like this

Jon Friedberg at cardplayer.com has a really good thing going. He hosts an online show called “Under The Gun,” and he seems to be talking to hot female poker players just about every week. In this edition, he talked to the beautiful Liv Boeree and Lauren Kling:

Show me that poker face

Poker faces have been on display for weeks at the WSOP. Pokernews.com shows us a lot of them, set to the soundtrack of Lady Gaga’s song of the same name. Featured are Jennifer “jennicide” Leigh, Joe Cada, Lauren Kling, David Williams and Chris Moneymaker, among others:

Poker bloopers?

One thing the world of online poker is missing is blooper reels. Pokernews.com fills that void with some of the best bloopers from the last month and a half from their very cute poker reporters: Gloria Balding, Lynn Gilmartin and Kristy Arnett. Enjoy:

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Here’s all the action that went down on day 6 of the World Series of Poker main event, where there’s two more days of play before the November Nine is set. Here are live updates from day 7, which is already under way.

If you’re looking for the storylines you might see play out on television when this gets around to being aired on ESPN, an interesting take from pokernews.com here. And if you want a recap of what went down on day 6, in video from, here ya go:

What would some famous poker players do if they didn’t play poker for a living? PokerStars has your answer below:

The World Poker Tour event at the Bellagio is over. The six-handed final table had Phil Ivey and Justin “BoostedJ” Smith, but neither of them won. Instead, it was Moritz Kranich of Germany taking home more than $800K. You can get more info over at WPT’s web site, or read a shorter recap here.

Here are the top tweets of the day from poker players, from BLUFF. Including @BJNemeth (BJ Nemeth): Is anyone in the WSOP Media interested that @PhilIvey is on the verge of possibly winning a major title across the street? Hello? Bueller?

Meanwhile, Phil Hellmuth said he’s going to stay ahead of Phil Ivey in the career WSOP bracelet race — story here. Ivey currently has 8, Hellmuth 11. And here’s Hellmuth’s entrance to the WPT event, not quite as big of a production as his entrance to the main event:

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Here’s a look at what happened in day 1c of the World Series of Poker main event, including a big day for former two-time champ Johnny Chan. Depending on the final numbers for registration, this could be the second largest ME in history. There were already 1,800 registered before the final day one even began, and capacity was 3,800 for 1d. The tournament is already over 6,000 entrants and will definitely be bigger than last year, but how much bigger remains to be seen. The largest tournament was 2006, with 8,773 entrants. Jamie Gold won that year.

You can get live updates from day 1d at WSOP.com, as always. And a video update below:

Phil Hellmuth made a big entrance yesterday, coming in as a “fighter.” But he also left on day one. Here’s a take on Mr. Hellmuth from Dr. Pauly, and here was his entrance, if you missed it:

In the prettier WSOP ME competitors department, pokernews.com has an interview with Jennifer “Jennicide” Leigh, who is also a parttimepoker.com member. Story here, watch below:

Here are the top tweets of the day. Get them now before they start tailing off with fewer people at the WSOP. @JonAguiar (Jon Aguiar) : Used hellmuths entrance as a distraction to raise 86s utg flop top 2 and get 3 streets, 39k

A while ago we reported on the “Bruce Buffer poker room” that was going in at the Luxor. Well, the room named after the mixed martial arts octagon announcer/poker player is officially open new. Watch a video from the scene below:

FTOPS is back, with the 17th iteration of the online tournament series. $19 million will be guaranteed this time around, starting on August 4. Read more here.

It’s a good day if you want to play live poker and you live in Pennsylvania. Table games are now officially open in the western part of the state.

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More than 2,300 players registered for day 1c, pushing the total number of players with one more “day one” to go at just under 5,000. If day 1d tops 2,000 players, this will be the second largest main event in history. At worst it appears this year will be ahead of last year’s field size.

The big story out of day 1c is Johnny Chan, the two-time main event champion, who was second in chips with 164K. Chan has 10 bracelets but has not won one since 2005. From the initial 2,300, under 1,700 survived to make day two.

Other players who topped 100K in chips included Lauren “SUPERMODL” Kling (150K); bracelet winner Robert Mizrachi (134K), the brother of Michael; and World Poker Tour Championship winner David Williams (112K), who was the chip leader early in the day.

Other notables with better than starting stacks included two-time bracelet winner Brock “t_soprano” Parker (81K); Christian “charder30″ Harder (75K); 2010 National Heads-Up Poker champ Annie Duke (60K); three-time bracelet winner and former ME runner-up Sammy Farha (59K); defending main event champion Joe Cada (55K). Patrik Antonius, who was among the people turned away from the final day one of last year’s ME, made it into this year’s field and is sitting on 65K chips.

Four-time bracelet winner Daniel Negreanu is still alive, but is only at 24K chips.

Among the players who are gone are former ME champs Phil Hellmuth and Jerry Yang, Dario Minieri, Men “The Master” Nguyen, Tom Dwan and Jeff Madsen.

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Want to watch the Tournament of Champions, a freeroll for a $1 million consisting of 27 players? You can watch live streaming here. Many of the top players in the world will be a part of this one, with names like Hellmuth, Ivey, Brunson and Negreanu. Should be a good show. More here on the event.

Here’s a recap of what’s going on in every active tournament at the WSOP, including Gavin Smith breaking through for his first bracelet. If you want live updates, WSOP.com has you covered here. And a video recap for those who don’t like to read below:

Time is running out in the WSOP player of the year race. Here’s a piece that handicaps the field:

The Brits are owning at this year’s WSOP, and here’s a look at how they’ve taken Vegas by storm, with several bracelets going across the pond. Also having a pretty good year? Phil Hellmuth, even though he hasn’t shipped his 12th bracelet yet. More here.

Here are the top tweets from the WSOP. Enjoy the hilarity of poker players, as always. Here’s our fav: @evybabee (Evelyn Ng) : @navarrotells i think i use ventral denial as a way to deter unwanted sexual attention. i think it’s more like “mammoral denial” lol

Silly Austrians. A group of players from the European country have unofficially broken Phil Laak’s “poker endurance” record. Read more here. They played for six days straight. We’re guessing it won’t be long till more crazies try to do this.

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Handicapping heads-up
Just eight players remain in the $10K heads-up championship from the 256 players who started two days ago.

Who has the best chance of winning? There are several strong candidates. First, the matchups:
Jason Somerville vs. Kido Pham
Faraz Jaka vs. Ayaz Mahmood
Alexander Kostritsyn vs. Ludovic Lacay
Ernst Schmejkal vs. Vanessa Rousso

The smart money would be on Jaka, Kostritsyn, Pham and Rousso. Jaka, aka “The Toilet,” has been one of the hottest players in the world over the last year, and has over $2 million in live tournament cashes. Rousso is a Team PokerStars pro who won the European Poker Tour Grand Final last year. And Kostritsyn is one of the top cash game players in the world, regularly playing at the highest limits at Full Tilt’s tables. Pham, who eliminated Phil Ivey, has won a WSOP circuit event and has over $2 million in live tournament cashes.

Of course, anything can happen in heads-up play, and their opponents in the quarterfinals aren’t exactly chopped liver. It will be interesting to see how things break down today.

The stars come out
If you like following poker’s biggest stars, almost all of them will be in action in small fields today, and there will likely be some clashes between names you’ve heard of.

First, there’s a HORSE event that started yesterday, and tons of poker’s brightest stars are still in, like Daniel Negreanu, Phil Ivey, Doyle Brunson, and Phil Hellmuth.

A $10K pot-limit hold’em tourney starts today, as well, and this will likely be a pretty select field, given the buy-in and the game being played. Some, like Ivey, will likely buy into the $10K event while still playing in the HORSE tournament.

What’s going on today?
In addition to the bracelet in the heads-up event, they’ll play to a winner in the seniors event. One of the $1K events will play its second “day one,” and the HORSE event continues into day two.

One event starts today: Event No. 38: $10,000 Pot-Limit Hold’em Championship

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If you want to read about the two bracelets that were handed out on Wednesday, here’s your recap of all the active tournaments. Antonio Esfandiari is in the final 18 of the $5K event. And here’s what to watch for today, including the Tournament of Champions qualifier with the likes of Tom Dwan and Gus Hansen, going on right now, and Phil Hellmuth’s latest tirade. Here is more about the Poker Brat’s outburst.

And here’s your recap of the action, in video form. As always, you can get updates at WSOP.com.

And speaking of Hellmuth and controversy, there’s already some buzz about PokerStars’ Big Game, a new TV show set to air next week. You can get a whiff of it over at pokerstatic.com. And here’s a preview of the show.

Top tweets of the day are here to entertain you. Our fav: @eugenetoddbro (Eugene Todd) : “I wanna fight some body. Any body wanna brawl meet me in the parking lot.”

Recently, we reported on Daniel Negreanu’s rant against inaccurate chip counts at WSOP.com. Pokerati’s got a take on that here.

The latest episode of ESPN’s Inside Deal is out, and, not shockingly, it’s got a lot of WSOP material in it:

The WSOP means a wider variety of cash games than any other time of the year during the year. Story about that here.

With the WSOP a quarter over, there’s a new power rankings out at ESPN.com. Phil Ivey hasn’t done jack yet at this WSOP, but he’s still No. 1.

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Here’s a closer look at every WSOP tournament that just wrapped up and is currently going on. And if you want to know what to watch for coming up at the WSOP, here’s some interesting storylines. There will be six tournaments going on simultaneously for a while.

For live updates, including the final 12 of the $10K stud tournament, you can head over to WSOP.com for live updates. And for a video update of what’s going on, watch below:

Meanwhile, Daniel Negreanu takes issue with those live updates from the WSOP website, which are provided by pokernews.com. He says they’ve been personally wrong for him, and he’s heard several other players who have taken issue with the accuracy. It’s certainly a tall order to constantly get accurate chip counts, but it does kind of defeat the purpose if they’re wrong all the time. Anyway, read Daniel’s blog here. And in more complaints from pros, Erik Seidel has a problem with the schedule, and how it’s hard for a no-limit player to win bracelets because of huge field sizes. We’re pretty sure the WSOP is a way to make money, not an outlet to make it easier for pros to win bracelets. If they could make money by running tournaments that Seidel could win more easily, we’re sure they’d do that.

One of the stories from yesterday was Phil Hellmuth’s deep run in a tourney, and a shot at a 12th bracelet. That didn’t happen. But Dr. Pauly has an interesting take from the scene, which you can read here.

In ther poker-playing women’s division of the WSOP, here are interviews with Jennifer Harman and Kara Scott:

That Phil Laak poker-playing endurance record thingy is still going on…you can catch up with the details here. He’s getting pretty close to breaking the record. Hooray?

We guess we called Isildur1 dead too early. He’s back with a net profit of more than a quarter of a million at Full Tilt’s high-stakes tables. Get the latest here.

Does animations of flaming cards excite you? If so, you can get flaming cards if you play at bodog. Hot. There’s also some other changes in their latest software update.

In the continuing debate over whether poker is more skill or luck, we have this ruling from a court in Switzerland. They declared it’s a game of luck. To that we say: Booooooo.

And Brandon Cantu re-signed with UB.com. Read more here.

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After being MIA for a while, Isildur1 is back at Full Tilt’s high-stakes tables. But no fireworks yet. Read about his latest session here. Meanwhile, Patrik Antonius, after being stuck more than $3 million for the year, is back in profit. Ballin’. Here’s a recap of some of the recent high-stakes action at FTP.

The Spring Championship of Online Poker rolls on. Get recaps and live updates at PokerStars’ blog. Here’s a shorter recap of the action, and you can watch a video of what went down on the $2,100 two-day event over the first two days of SCOOP below:

Recently, we reported that David Williams, who just won the World Poker Tour Championship, and bodog had cut ties, leaving them with just two “pros,” both of whom are women. Post from pokerati here about the break up and his free agency.

Phil Hellmuth is blowin’ up on Twitter. First, hanging on set with Ludacris while he shoots his new video:

Then he released this prop bet between Mike Matusow and Ted Forrest: “Ted Forrest (188 pounds) wins $2million from Mike “The mouth” if he weighs 139 pds July 15, or $1M by Sept 24-if not Ted pays Mikey $150,000″. And Hellmuth’s media blitz continued with a victory in a game televised on “Good Morning America,” featuring the Poker Brat and Annie Duke. Read more here.

The latest episode of the North American Poker Tour just aired at ESPN. They’re showing the $25K high-roller shootout from the Mohegan Sun now. Recap of what happened on the show here, first segment below, find the whole episode over at pokertube.

There’s been a lot of chatter about getting rid of sunlgasses for televised poker, of late. It was discussed by players on the latest episode of “High Stakes Poker,” then there was a blog post from Daniel Negreanu. Apparently, PokerStars’ new TV show, “The Big Game,” has banned sunglasses. If you skip over the thousand words about Daniel’s golf game, you get to this: “I’m so happy when I see online guys like Tom Dwan, Patrik Antonius, and Phil Galfond man up by not hiding behind shades. The majority of the best players in the world DO NOT wear sunglasses. One of the biggest differences between live and online poker is the ability to see your opponent. Eyes and all. Doyle Brunson doesn’t wear shades. Phil Ivey doesn’t wear shades.”

There was a media call for the upcoming World Series of Poker yesterday. For an lol recap/live blog, check out wickedchopspoker.com’s take on the proceedings.

Want to buy Phil Ivey’s house in Vegas? It will cost you a bit under $2 million. Read about it here.

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FTOPS XVI is under way at Full Tilt Poker, and three events are already over. You can check out the action here from the first day. What happened? “Bro20″ got his second jersey, and there were overlays in two of the three events. If you’re looking for details about the series and the schedule, we have you covered here.

Tom Dwan is on his way to becoming a billionaire at Full Tilt Poker’s high-stakes tables, we think. Well, not actually. But he is up almost $7 million this year. Story about durrrrr’s upswing here.

The epicness of the World Poker Tour $25,000 Championship television final table was reduced greatly by the people who busted in seventh (Phil Hellmuth) and eighth (Scotty Nguyen). The lineup which still includes David Benyamine and David Williams, is a solid roster of pros. But adding Phil and Scotty, baby, would have made it amazing. Here’s a wrap of the action. They’ll be playing for the top prize of $1.5 million.

Random tweets from poker pros? We’re in. Here’s the best, as we approve of using Twitter to complain about busting out of tournaments: “@DougLeePoker (Doug Lee) : Still can’t sleep after busting out of the Bellagio 25k. Bunch of broke nobodies, who can’t even begin to understand my style. ”

The European Poker Tour is gearing up for its Grand Final, being held in Monte Carlo. Here’s a look at the site of the tournament:

The World Series of Poker is about a month away, and we learned a bit about what we’ll be seeing on TV this year. Story here tells us that ESPN will show the main event (ldo), the $50,000 Players Championship, and the Tournament of Champions freeroll. Can’t say that we like the trend where we’re getting less and less of the smaller events, but they have to air what makes them money. But can’t they put that stuff on ESPN8, the Ocho?

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